


Unhurried

by goodnicepeople



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Found Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-12
Updated: 2017-01-12
Packaged: 2018-09-16 23:56:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9295286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodnicepeople/pseuds/goodnicepeople
Summary: "Then you don't know me," Taako says. "Because I don't give a shit. About other people.""You saved the world," Magnus insists a bit pleadingly, with a quality Taako quietly resents."It was a job, bubbeleh," Taako shrugs. His voice wavers, for just a moment, before Taako wrestles it back. "Just a job."---------Life is short and some people keep rushing through it.





	

Everything Taako intended to say, everything he'd mulled over, everything Kravitz had implored him to consider and practice. 

All of it is knocked out of him the moment Magnus opens his door. His left arm in a sling, his face mottled with bruises, head wrapped tight in some sort of linen. Dark, dried blood barely camouflaged at his hairline by his temple, which is graying now, despite his frequent insistence that he patently is _not_. Taako's head instantly swims - pitches sideways, disorientingly, for a moment. Suddenly sick, in a way that feels feels an awful lot like a hand reaching into his ribcage and seizing up his guts. 

He's been angry for hours, is the thing. Hours. Hearing some stranger, small-sounding and distant over the stone of farspeech.

Injured? What the fuck does that mean, injured?

Kravitz's hand on his shoulder. Shushing him, lightly, until Taako wrenches out of his gentle, tentative grasp.

Hello? he shouts again, into the stone. Don't I get some _fucking_ details? 

Angry the whole way here. Angry at Kravitz for his well-meaning, too-quiet placation. Angry at Magnus for being exactly who he is, unbending, unchanging - 

Taako reaches up and slaps Magnus across the face.

" _Fffuck_ ," Taako hears, gritted out through clenched teeth. Magnus turns back looking wounded. Emotionally. Physically, too, still. This very much, irreversibly, their present reality. "What was - " 

Taako slaps him again. 

"Idiot," Taako snaps. His voice cracks on the word like old flatware. "What's wrong with you?"

He pushes Magnus inside past the threshold and follows suit. Lays two palms flat on his chest and shoves, again, harder. 

"Taako," Magnus yelps. He bats him away with his uninjured arm, but surprised and compromised as he is, it's easy for Taako to regroup and strike again, pounding the side of his fist into Magnus' sternum. 

"You're hurting me."

"Good," Taako hisses. "Idiot. Idiot. What the - _who_ the hell do you think you are?"

Magnus stumbles away from him, glancing over his shoulder, panicked like a trapped animal. Taako knows Magnus wouldn't fight back, wouldn't dare lay a finger on him. Years ago he'd grabbed Taako's arm during a spat, seized him just a touch too hard, freezing up as he watched Taako pale and hiss and yank away. And Magnus had  _wept_. Offered up apology after apology, hands raised and palms outturned in an act of supplication. The dolt. So mired in his insistent affection. Overreacting to nothing. Nothing. 

Taako feels the wheels beginning to fall off his proverbial cart. The anger leaving him in a gust, until he feels very small, and very exhausted.

The thinks, maybe, there's an apology to be made.

"You could've died," Taako says, instead. Keeping his ire intact. Keeping the fire roiling.

"I wasn't even close."

"That's not what I was told. Some doctor, on your stone of farspeech."

Magnus' face turns red.

"I -- I didn't know who else to call. She wasn't supposed to mention... _that_."

Taako pushes Magnus back into one of his kitchen chairs. He lands in it with little grace. Taako secretly praises Magnus' sturdy, inscrutable craftsmanship; he hardly thinks he could keep this going, as furious as he is, with Magnus sprawled out on the ground surrounded by smashed furniture.

"You work -- _we_ work -- so fucking hard. And that's how you're going to throw it away?"

"A bridge collapsed," Magnus protests. "People were on it!"

"So?"

Magnus makes a loud, almost comical sound of disbelief.

"So? So they could have died, Taako."

"Again: so?" Taako's crowds him, standing between his chair and the back of Magnus' couch. Looking down at him. An unusual twist of position, and all the more appropriate, Taako thinks. "Seriously. _So?_ Things happen. People die all the time." 

"Maybe they weren't supposed to die yet."

"Says who?"

Magnus shrugs and looks away.

"A little presumptuous of you, huh, big guy?" Taako scoffs. "Not your mess, not your problem." 

"It's my problem if I want it to be," Magnus retorts loudly. Gaining back some of that blustering morality - that holier-than-thou nonsense Taako disdains. Magnus puffs himself up, accidentally bumping his broken arm back against the table and hissing, withering back against his chair as he continues, "If I see something I want to fix... "

"They're _strangers_. You give more of a shit about five strangers - "

"Six." 

Taako talks louder over him, " _More_ of a shit about strangers than you do about yourself?"

"Maybe." 

"More than you do about _me_?" 

Taako isn't entirely sure he intended to say that. But Taako doesn't regret things, and refuses to start now.

"That's not very fair," Magnus says, after what feels like an interminable silence, filled only by the sound of quiet, ragged breathing. A sound that portends fractured ribs. 

"Well, I'm not very fair."

"And it isn't nice."

"Newsflash, bucko," Taako whoops joylessly, "I'm also not very nice!"

He throws his hands up, one of the many cheap rings adorning his fingers jumping off like a fish springing out of the water, where it clatters to the ground with a _ping_  and lies between them. Neither acknowledge it, pointedly. 

"I - " Magnus begins, and then clears his throat. His voice very quiet. "Yes, you are."

Taako laughs hollowly, the sound of it a little mocking - not his intention - but it skitters out of him, high and flat. He falls back against Magnus' couch with a bit too much force. It heaves against the wooden floor, which masks a small sound that escapes Taako. Something caught between a sigh and a whine, something that felt propelled out of him by the collision.

"Then you don't know me," Taako says. "Because I don't give a shit. About other people." 

"You saved the world," Magnus insists a bit pleadingly, with a quality Taako quietly resents.

There is a Taako that exists in this world, only in Magnus' mind. A Taako shrouded by an unwarranted, fervent admiration. A vision of him that refuses to acknowledge his callousness, his selfish knee-jerk self-preservation. One that sees him as imminently protectable - worth protecting - when Taako is far stronger and far more ruthless than Magnus has ever comprehended. A Taako not quite in focus, made hazy through a lens of what Taako can only call love. He knows this Taako isn't real.

Though _sometimes_. It feels foolish to admit it. It burns him up a little, to feel the strange, alluring desire of that fantasy. Being that Taako. Magnus' stupid little paragon of goodness. 

"It was a job, bubbeleh," Taako shrugs. His voice wavers, for just a moment, before Taako wrestles it back. "Just a job."

"It was more than that. You cared about people then."

"Nah. I cared about -- "

He doesn't finish that sentence. Snatches that potential regret right out of thin air and strangles it out of existence. Magnus fidgets in his chair in the silence, clearly wrestling with and losing out to realizations of his own.

It's only hard because it's true, kid, Taako thinks. Loudly and insistently enough that he feels like Magnus can hear it broadcasted past that thick skull of his. 

Taako settles into a chair opposite him at the table. Without looking, Magnus shifts until his hand is resting atop Taako's upturned palm. Running calloused fingers absently over the softest parts. The swell of flesh beneath his thumb, the expanse of his wrist. A strange, vulnerable habit. One from far back, shared mostly in silent moments, miles and miles above here, in a living room on the moon so late at night it tipped to morning. The moments when Taako allowed Magnus to indulge the comfort of contact; something easy and platonic and close with no further expectation. No flinching. No pretense.

"Have you told Merle? Could be good for some healing. If he still remembers how."

Magnus shakes his head. Drums his fingers on the table, still refusing to meet Taako's eyes.

"I don't -- he doesn't have to see me this way." 

"Oh," Taako drawls, leaning forward, chin in his free hand. "But I get the honors?" 

"I didn't want him to. Um. I guess. I don't know." Magnus' sentences get staccato, his voice goes thin, like varnish worn off an old table. "I got scared. But if no one knew, I guess..." 

With a small cough, Magnus redirects himself, noting,

"One of your rings fell off."

"Yeah, I know, bub." 

"It was kinda stupid. You were all yelling, and stuff, and - "

"Yeah, yeah, I know," Taako relents, laughingly. Letting Magnus have the benefit for once, letting him enjoy the upper hand.

Magnus leans down to reach for the ring, lift it off the carpet, but shoots back up in his chair with a hiss. He spasms, as if reaching for some injured part of his torso and forgetting his arm is otherwise occupied in a sling.

"Geez, my dude, stop," Taako yelps, pushing Magnus back against his hair. He pants, exhausted. His battered face suddenly looking also profoundly exhausted. Almost old. Taako snatches the ring off the floor with ease. Magnus makes an odd, strangled little sound.

"Let's go back to when I didn't give a shit about you," Taako says to clear the air, set them back on a more comfortable and familiar track. "That was easy. I liked that." 

"I never felt that way," Magnus insists emphatically. A little too earnest for the joke Taako is attempting. "And you cared, too."

"Are you kidding? I hardly bothered to learn your name until you jumped off a train and _died_."

"Nearly died," Magnus correctly, with a lopsided smirk. He points to his bruised face. "I'm getting good at that whole... state of existence." 

It isn't his intention - it never is - but that remark sours the air between them. Hanging there, unappealingly, as if the words are visible, heavy. 

"You should sleep," Taako chirps. A firm redirection. "I'll make you a tea that'll knock you right out."

"Can't," Magnus says. "I'm uh. Not supposed to. Concussed, and all."

Taako looks towards the wooden clock on the wall. One of Magnus' creations; one he owns a brother of in his own home. Taako's gifted clock more ornate, carved with thorny roses, Magnus' plain but appealingly smooth, almost soft looking. It is four in the afternoon. 

"Well," Taako says. "I guess we've got some hours to burn." 

\---

In the late hours of the evening, tipping to morning, Taako lets Magnus lay with his head in his lap by the fireplace. The closeness old and familiar, but still unspoken. Taako always too stubborn and skittish. Magnus always cleaving too hard, too desperately, with a measure of something frightened.

It's late, and Taako is tired. Magnus' eyes are heavy, so he shakes him again.

"Wake up, Mags."

"I'm awake."

A log cracks in the fireplace. Burned black and exhausted, almost entirely ash. It twists something up in Taako's gut. 

"I don't get much time with you, dummy." Taako says, and watches how Magnus' face contorts. "Don't cut it shorter than I -- than what I'm already gonna get."

"Taako - "

"No, I'm serious. You? Lucky you? In the timeline of your life, _Taako_ is gonna be there to dazzle you for most of it. And for me it's a long road, bub. Magnus is - _pop_ \- a blink."

Magnus' breath hitches. It takes Taako a moment to realize Magnus has begun to cry.

"Shh," Taako says, running fingers through Magnus' hair, careful to avoid his wound, the uneven raised lumps from crashing into multiple hard objects. " _Shh_ , c'mon. I just told you you're the lucky one!"

Magnus wipes his free hand across his face, choking back a wounded, piteous sound.

"S-sorry," he stutters. He reaches for Taako's hand, who grips back and doesn't complain that it's likely wet with tears and snot and who knows what else.

"I'm not trying to be stupid," Magnus says, his voice quiet and low. Uneven and soft. Something about it reminds Taako of the sound of snow underfoot - tamped down, and hazy.

"But you are," Taako retorts.

"I am," Magnus agrees. "I. It's not that I want to... I just, if someone needs my _help_ \- "

Taako squeezes his hand. 

"You'd think saving the very fate of humanity was enough for him, but _no,_ " Taako drawls. "Five people fall off a bridge and here comes Mister Hero, risking life and limb."

"Six people," Magnus asserts, closing his eyes. He clears his throat. "And a dog." 

"And a dog," Taako sighs. He pats Magnus' cheek, perhaps a little too firmly. "Hey. You heard me. Don't fall asleep." 

"You promised you'd say interesting things! Tell good stories!" 

"I am," Taako insists. "For instance, once I was sitting by the fireplace with this neanderthal of a man and I killed him in cold blood right there for stepping to me - "

Taako doesn't concern himself with _good_. Whatever that means. Being good. Doing good. Such a vacuous concept and, as far as he's seen, all it leaves is people clamoring for more, more, again, it's not enough. They'll bleed you dry of kindness. Eat up every last drop you can spare.

Magnus' well runs awful deep, Taako thinks. For better or worse. 

Maybe his does, as well. 

It is a long night, shaking Magnus out of looming sleep. Scrounging up food to make. Laughing, loudly, and so hard it's like knives in his sides. The night passes slowly. Taako doesn't will it along any faster.


End file.
